As an additional idea, I would suggest calling to McIntosh to find out what's the best solution on using your cartridge. It also seems to me that you should not have these problems regardless of how far you underdriving your input and they can probably test it on their equipment. I used .5mV Shelter cartridge on my Musical Fidelity V-LPS MM phonostage and was able to bring volume. Vocals were OK and balanced every record played.
Why are the vocals on some records hidden behind the music on my system?
Help! I am new to this forum, but have been into audio for over 45 years and have never had this problem before. I was lucky enough to come into some money and decided to use some of it to up grade my system for the first time in almost 30 yrs. The system consists of McIntosh MC-402, McIntosh C-100, McIntosh MCD-500, VPI HW19 MKIII, Soundsmith Aida, Furutech Ag-12 phono cable, Furutech silver head shell wires, Furutech interconnects and Furutech speaker cables (yes I like Furutech) and Raidho XT-3 speakers. Now on some albums the vocals are buried behind the music and you have a really hard time hearing the singer? Not all albums are voiced in this manner but enough that it is bothersome. I have a large dedicated man room (24 x 27) with minimum treatment. CDs sound just fine so I feel that it is with the phono preamp in the C-100? I have moved the speakers 100s of times and have them at 5' 8" apart and 8' 1" to the focal point and the soundstage is good and the vocals are better, but you still have to really listen hard to hear certain vocals on some albums. Most of my albums are 30 to 50 years old and have been cleaned with a sonic cleaner (best thing ever imho). Even some of my new heavy vinyl has this problem.
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Some recordings might be out of phase. Reverse the speaker cable on one speaker and see if that improves the problem. This explains phase! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_Of_Phase_Stereo More info! https://www.gcaudio.com/tips-tricks/absolute-polarity-a-prerequisite-to-optimum-performance/ |
Speaking of recordings being out of phase/polarity, at least 50% of CDs are out of polarity, you know, just by blind luck - there is no Standard for Polarity - and perhaps as much as 92%, if George Louis, the Polarity Pundit, is correct in his logic. Which begs the question, shouldn’t our systems be placed Out of Absolute Polarity for best overall performance? 😳 |
Once again I want to thank everyone who has chimed in to help fix this problem! Looks like I will have a lot of work ahead of me to find the real issue. I have already double and triple checked the head shell wiring to verify that they are correct (they are), so on to re-alignment, overhang, vta,etc. before investing in a separate phono stage. I did try reversing the speaker cables just as an experiment (didn't help). Hopefully one of these suggestions will be the one that works! |
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